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A 
BIRTHDAY BOOK 

of 

KANSAS CITY 

1821-1921 

CHARLES PHELPS GUSHING 



ILLUSTRATED FROM PHOTOGRAPHS 






Kansas City, Missouri 

BURTON PUBLISHING COMPANY 

Publishers 



.V<2 



Copyrighted 1921 by 
Burton Publishing Company 



0C7 lu 



1321 



©CI.A6247a5 



Dedicated to 

J. C. NICHOLS 

Who, though not a pioneer in the work of 
making Kansas City "a good place to live 
in," has set us as brave an example, both of 
vision and of accomplishment, as any of our 
forefathers.. — By the Author. 



A BIRTHDAY BOOK OF 
KANSAS CITY 



We eagerly devour these days the life 
stories of successful men, hoping to find 
in them something to our personal profit. 
Might we not equally profit by dipping 
into the life story of a successful city, 
which won against great odds by the same 
kind of pluck and vision through which 
great men attain success? The principles 
which apply to individuals hold also for 
communities of men — whole cities. Have 
a look, for example, at the case of West- 
port Landing, a valiant little town which 
always was willing to pay the price of 
success. 

Before another summer rolls around 
the town which once in contempt was 
nicknamed "Westport Landing" will be 
celebrating her birthday with a cake of a 
hundred candles. Today she has the dis- 
tinction of being the largest city in the 
whole length of the Missouri Valley, or, 
if you except only St. Louis, in all the 
great plains country from the Mississippi 
Hiver west to the Rocky Mountains. And 

Page seven 



that she has attained such conspicuous 
success in so short a time is all the more 
remarkable because the settlement had to 
battle, from the very beginning, against 
a formidable series of obstacles. 

In canoes and pirogues in the summer 
of 1821, a little band of early day French 
poilus paddled up the Big Muddy — a peril- 
ous cruise of twenty days into the wilder- 
ness — and established a fur trading out- 
post on the banks of this turbulent river 
a few miles below the mouth of what was 
then known only as the "Kaw." (On the 
maps the "Kaw" is now set down as the 
"Kansas River," but it never has been 
accepted locally as the proper name of 
the stream.) The French pioneers built 
a warehouse and a few log cabins. Then 
they set to work to establish the settle- 
ment's first reputation as a hustling cen- 
ter for wholesale trade, jobbing and re- 
tailing. The petite ville had a popula- 
tion of only 31, but it did a volume of 
business all out of proportion to its puny 



Thus was a tradition set which has 
been faithfully cherished even unto the 
present day. By the census of 1920 the 
community at the mouth of the Kaw num- 
bers, as you may know, 324,410 on the 
Missouri side of the state line, and 100,- 
177 on the Kansas side. (Doubtless, by 
this time, you have guessed that its pres- 
ent name is "Kansas City.") Many other 

Page eight 



American cities are ahead of it on the 
census lists, but the community carries on 
an amount of business all out of propor- 
tion to its size, and in volume of bank 
clearings ranks fifth in the entire United 
States, right up next to New York, Chi- 
cago, Boston and Philadelphia, like a ban- 
tam soldier mixed into a squad of six- 
footers. 

Vision told Francois Chouteau and his 
comrades that somewhere near the con- 
fluence of these two great water high- 
ways, one of them 3,000 miles long, a 
great city might some day arise. These 
valiant Frenchmen might even have 
dreamed — who knows? — that the place 
would become eventually what it is today 
— the giant of the whole Missouri Valley. 

The great treacherous beast of a river, 
which the Indians called the "Big Muddy," 
picked the location of Westport Landing 
and afterward tried time and again to de- 
stroy it. Chouteau and his voyageurs 
chose this site as a strategic situation for 
an outpost for fur trading — both with 
the trappers of the Rocky Mountains and 
with the Indians of the western plains^, 
tributary to the Kaw valley. 

Besides vision, this little band of pion- 
eers had as an inheritance of their blood 
a goodly store of courage — for they were 
Frenchmen. Does this latter declaration 
require to be supported? If so, it may 
be recounted that only last month your 

Page 7iine 



correspondent listened to Henry P. Davi- 
son of the American Red Cross tell of 
the plight and the bravery of present day 
France. Her people, he related, stand in 
dire need of a thousand and one necessi- 
ties of life, goods which they must for- 
bear to import to any great extent from 
the New World on account of the fright- 
fully high rate of exchange which we 
charge them upon their money. These 
Frenchmen, only yesterday our best pals, 
with whom we fought shoulder to shoulder 
in the deadliest war of modern times, 
must go wanting. 

"But one thing," Mr. Davison con 
eluded, "they don't need to import from 
anybody, and never did need to import — 
and that is couragej" 

Francois Chouteau and his poilus of a 
hundred years ago carried to the mouth 
of the Kaw a goodly stock of French 
courage. The voyageurs stuck to their 
guns in the lonely trading post despite 
hostile Indians, pestilence and flood. 

The treacherous, tawny, old river, a 
lion when enraged, was their most for- 
midable enemy. Barely four years after 
they had established themselves on its 
banks, a June flood swept away their 
warehouse and half of the houses of the 
settlement. With the same indomitable 
"Kansas City Spirit" which an older city 
showed in 1900, when on the eve of a na- 
tional political convention the hall which 

Page ten 



Kansas City had prepared for the meet- 
ing burned swiftly to the ground, these 
pioneers grimly set to rebuilding, bigger 
and better. For by this time their con- 
viction was deeper than ever that some- 
where in the immediate neighborhood of 
their settlement lay the site destined to 
become the queen city of the western 
plains. 

Two rival claimants for this eminence 
sprang up close by within the next two 
years. 

The first, founded in 1827, only six 
years after the French pioneers had moor- 
ed their canoes below the mouth of the 
Kaw, chose for its seat the graceful hill- 
tops ten miles eastward, and gloried in 
the name of "Independence." 

For thirty years or more, despite the 
handicap of being situated three miles in- 
land from the banks of the Missouri, the 
fame of Independence far eclipsed that 
of the more conveniently located French 
settlement. 

By 1831 Independence had captured 
most of the trade that flowed from Mis- 
souri River steamboats onto prairie 
schooners and across the plains to the 
great Southwest over the old Santa Fe 
Trail. But the little French settlement 
at the mouth of the Kaw stuck to its 
knitting. It was sure it was right, and 
it went ahead! 

Page eleven 



The very loveliness of the country 
around Independence contributed to defeat 
this community's ambition to become the 
West's "City of Destiny." Washington 
Irving, visiting it in 1832, wrote enthus- 
iastically of it to his sister: 

"Yesterday I was out on a deer hunt 
in the vicinity of this place, which led me 
through some scenery that only wanted a 
castle, or a gentleman's seat here and 
there interspersed to have equalled some 
of the most celebrated park scenery of 
England." 

It was this very loveliness that at- 
tracted to Independence in the early 
thirties an invasion of Mormons, seeking 
a new El Dorado. Their arrival brought 
on a bitter clash between Mormons and 
Gentiles. The Gentiles at last, by force 
of bloodshed and harsh legislation, won 
an indisputable victory. 

Despite this civil war. Independence 
held its supremacy of the commerce of the 
river until the early 'forties. Then an- 
other rival, striving eagerly to become the 
Port of the West, and ambitiously nam- 
ing itself after the heart's desire "West- 
port," began to menace Independence with 
defeat. 

Westport, like Independence, lay inland 
three or four miles, as if she, too, feared 
to choose a site close to the tawny river. 
Westport used the docks of the old French 

Page Hvelve 



fur trading settlement as the landing 
place for her goods, and in derision she 
nicknamed our heroine *'Westport Land- 
ing." 

All the little town on the levee an- 
swered to this was: "We can stand it!" 
The river settlement cast about for a 
suitable name and decided officially to 




The Missouri River levee, the site of "Westport 

Landing," as it is today. Photo shows docks 

of the barge line to St. Louis and 

the new bridge. — Gushing. 



style herself, simply as "Kansas." In 
1839 the townsite was first surveyed and 
the plots offered at public auction. They 
sold under the hammer for the not too 
staggering total sum of $4,220. 

Again the river of destiny stepped in 
and did something dramatic. It burst 
over its banks in 1844 with the greatest 

Page thirteen 



n 



flood ever known in the Big Muddy's tur- 
bulent history, carried off Monsieur Fran- 
cois Chouteau's second fur warehouse, 
and then, tearing madly on downstream, 
swept away the docks and warehouses at 
Wayne City, ten miles below, which serv- 
ed as the landing place for steamboat 
shipments to Independence. 

Westport gained with this blow the final 
supremacy over her downstream rival, In- 
dependence. Preparations for the im- 
pending war with Mexico were booming 
local business, because the neighborhood 
of the Kaw's mouth was the nearest port 
to the southwestern border. Westport 
was quick to seize the opportunity and 
nail it down. 

Destiny then smiled upon Westport for 
as many years — a dozen or more, at least 
— as she had smiled upon Independence. 
For a few more years Independence strug- 
gled gamely and desperately. She rebuilt 
the Wayne City docks and warehouses and 
showed further enterprise by construct- 
ing what is reputed to be the first rail- 
way ever laid down west of the Missis- 
sippi — three and a half miles of wooden 
track bound with steel bands. This ran 
(or, rather ambled — for it was operated 
by mule power) from Wayne City to In- 
dependence Square; and it was opened in 
time to bid for the traffic of gold seekers 
in '49 pouring overland toward California. 
Independence scored another technical 

Page fourteen 



victory by being named in 1850 the east- 
ern terminus of the West's first overland 
mail route, a stage line 1,200 miles long, 
to Salt Lake City. 

But the jig was up and Westport gloat- 
ed when in another year the railway had 
to be abandoned. The tricky old river 
was forming a sandbar in front of the 
Wayne City docks, and boats could no 
longer land there. Westport was so jub- 
ilant about the victory that she almost 
forgot to laugh at "Westport Landing" 
in 1850 for making bold to christen her- 
self the "TOWN of Kansas," and the 
very next year putting on further airs 
with the title of "CITY of Kansas." 

Another big rush of business came along 
in 1854 when the government threw open 
Kansas Territory to settlement. The 
neighborhood of the Kaw's mouth was 
the gateway to the homeseekers, pouring 
in by the hundreds on Missouri River 
steamboats from the east. 

The decade, 1850-1860, became the 
"golden era" of Missouri River steam- 
boating. At the peak of the traffic, in 
1857, the little "City of Kansas" counted 
729 boats arrive and depart from her 
levee. 

About this time a prophet arose in the 
land. His name was William Gilpin. In 
1855, while Westport was yet the favorite 
of Destiny in the west, Gilpin drew a map 

Page fifteen 







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25 ^ 



Pagre sixteen 



of a great city of the future which he. 
called "Centropolis," because — just as the 
Secretary of the local Chamber of Com- 
merce now points out — the site is central 
enough to be described as "the Heart of 
America." 

This map of Gilpin's, at first glance, 
could easily be mistaken for a recent plat 
of Kansas City, Mo., for it includes with- 
in its limits both Westport and Independ- 
ence. True to prophecy, Westport was 
swallowed up by Kansas City long ago 
(1889), and the absorption of Independ- 
ence is also a matter of fact so far as 
the eye can discern. Independence dies 
hard, and feels a sentimental reluctance 
to confess to the reality of the situation 
by signing on the dotted line. 

Apropos of which, we are reminded of 
Roy Bean, a Wayne City and Independ- 
ence booster who died the hardest. He 
always refused even to have a look at 
Kansas City. As late as the early 'nine- 
ties some of his friends described to him 
the wonders of the big modern city a few 
miles up the river, its skyscrapers and 
the roar of its traffic, the scores of miles 
of residence streets, the throngs of people 
and the bright lights and the cable cars 
climbing like flies, up the steep inclines 
of its hills. They pleaded with him — 
wouldn't he go? No, he wouldn't. Perish 
the idea! With a wave of his hand he 
dismissed it: 

Page seventeen 



''Kansas City!" he snorted. "Kansas 
City is too far from Wayne City ever to 
amount to much!" 

This may serve to give a hint of why 
the Prophet Gilpin, previously mentioned, 
v/as accorded small honor in his day for 
his map of "Centropolis." No wonder — 
inasmuch as the "City of Kansas" at the 
time was only a few blocks of unpreten- 
tious business buildings along the levee 
and a few unlovely wooden residences 
perched above it on high clay banks in 
the rear. With a population in all, by 
the census of 1885, of 478! 

But a great deal was stirring along the 
levee. In two more years the population 
had increased to 3,224 and even Westport 
was jarred loose from her haughty con- 
tempt. Another two years and the "City 




Main Street, in the retail snopping district -Gushing. 

Page eighteen 



of Kansas" counted 4,418. It had graded 
a canon through the clay banks for a 
highway known as ''Main Street," had 
widened the levee and was swiftly living 
down the nickname of "Westport Land- 
ing." The city's former enemy had be- 
come a genial friend; the old river was 
now working overtime in a good cause. 

Then another staggering blow — the 
Civil War. Kansas City lay on the south 
side of the river and so close to the fight- 
ing waged along an open flank that her 
situation might be compared to that of a 
French village in Alsace. Battles were 
fought in both Independence and Westport 
when Confederate forces attempted to 
break througli and flank Grant's army 
from the West. The Battle of Westport, 
ending after three days in a clear victory 
for the Union, was as important an en- 
gagement as anything that happened west 
of the Mississippi River. Though Kansas 
City never was actually invaded, the 
fighting in her back yard was so noisy 
and uncomfortably close that business 
was nearly paralyzed, as in Paris when 
the Big Berthas were popping. The popu- 
lation dropped off from 7,180 to 4,000 in 
the first year of the war; then kept on 
slowly dwindling until at the close of the 
conflict the census showed barely 3,500. 

Men with commercial vision had not 
been lacking in the "City of Kansas" 
when the war began. They had forseen 

Page nineteen 



that the golden age of steamboating was 
nearing an end, and that the railway was 
the coming weapon of commercial supre- 
macy. Visioning this, they had energeti- 
cally boosted for railways. A contract 
had been let early in 1860 to build a con- 
nection from Kansas City to Cameron (45 
miles north) and $200,000 had been spent 
upon the effort to link up here, ahead of 
all rivals, with a railway that was push- 
ing westward across Missouri from Mark 
Twain's old town of Hannibal. The rival 
most feared was Fort Leavenworth, twen- 
ty-five miles up river and also not more 
than forty-five miles distant from Cam- 
eron Junction. 

When peace was signed in 1865, the 
hopeful "City of Kansas" had only 3,500 
population to compare with 15,000 in 
Leavenworth, for the garrison town up 
the river, protected with a big fort and 
safely removed from the battle area, had 
profited greatly during the war upon the 
misfortunes of her rival. 

The "City of Kansas" had to make a 
new start in life, like a convalescent just 
out of the hospital, and all her hope for 
success lay centered in railways. Work 
begun in '63 had been pressed under great 
difficulties upon a line from Kansas City 
(now the Union Pacific) forty miles up 
the Kaw Valley to Lawrence, Kans., and 
in '64 the first passenger train steamed 
into the western terminus. Another train, 

Page Hventy 



the same year, ran a picnic excursion 
down a little piece of track which hope- 
fully extended itself ten or twelve miles 
in the direction of St. Louis, ending at 
Little Blue. 

But that was all, and not bright with 
promise, for meanwhile the settlement at 
the Kaw's mouth was threatened with be- 
ing cut off like a lost battalion from the 
line of supplies and communications to the 
north, open from Cameron to Hannibal 
and connecting there, over the Mississippi, 
with the populous East. 

To make matters worse, the Missouri 
River must be bridged before the "City 
of Kansas" could hope to handle freight 
at competitive rates. In the eyes of our 
lost battalion the river was a giant moat, 
an obstacle more formidable to cross than 
the miles of barbed wire and concrete 
trenches of a Hindenburg Line. 

But again you must reckon upon the 
old Kansas City Spirit. Little as the 
place was at the time, as compared with 
Leavenworth, poor in purse and war- 
stricken, she had the same old vision, the 
same old courage. Though Leavenworth 
was already boasting that her contract to 
become the terminus of the Hannibal rail- 
way was "let and cinched," the "City of 
Kansas" would not give up the fight. 

A delegation of business men from the 
Kaw's mouth, financed by popular sub- 

Page twenty-one 



scription, was dispatched to hunt down 
the Eastern magnate who, as president 
of the Michigan Central, the Chicago, 
Burlington & Quincy, the Hannibal & St. 
Joseph and heaven knows how many other 
railroads all at once, was chief juggler 
of the destinies of the score of young 
cities in the Missouri Valley. 

This flying squadron, refusing to be- 
lieve that all was lost, kidnapped the 
magnate to the Kaw's mouth, and there 
harangued and wheedled and boasted and 
made glorious prophecies until he granted 
a delay upon the proceedings favoring 
Leavenworth. And in the end the mag- 
nate put his O. K, on the Kansas City 
plan, including even a bridge across the 
river. Immediately work was rushed to 
complete the connection from Harlem, 
on the north bank of the river from 
Kansas City, to the junction at Cameron. 

And now behold how, heartened with 
this victory, little spokes of steel with 
''nary terminus at 'ary end," reached 
out from a radius near the Kaw's mouth, 
east and west, north and south, eagerly 
seeking connection with the outside 
world. Over a line from St. Louis, com- 
peting with the Hannibal road, chugged 
in the first passenger train from the 
East, "beating out" the northern con- 
nection via Cameron, which was not 
thrown open to traffic until November, 
'67. Meanwhile the Union Pacific was 

Page ftventy-Hvo 



pushing feverishly westward, until in '68 
a train from Kansas City shrieked its 
way across the plains, stampeding In- 
dians and herds of buffalo, to a destina- 
tion in Denver. Another year and the 
"City of Kansas" celebrated, on the eve 
of the Fourth of July the opening of the 
"Hannibal Bridge" across the Missouri 
River — a free outlet to the North. 

Old settlers say that this bridge 
"made" Kansas City. The occasion was 
fittingly celebrated with speeches and a 
balloon ascension, followed by fifty years 
of gloating over the defeat administered 
to Leavenworth. 




A birdssye view of part of Kansas City's stockyards 

and packing district, cattle pens and chutes 

in the foreground. — Gushing. 

By this time Kansas City had a stock 
yards and a packing house; the boom 

Page twenty-three 




Page twenty-four 



that had laid down to die in 1860 had 
been gloriously revived; and in the five 
years from the close of the war until 
1870 the population had swollen from 
3,500 to 32,260. For though the river 
trade was languishing, the place now 
boasted of no less than seven railways. 

It was so far back as this that the 
first whisperings of another voice now 
vibrant in Kansas City were heard — the 
urge to civic betterment. In the years 
from '65 to '74 the little city dug down 
into her purse for $1,500,000 for street 
improvements. She had set herself to 
the task of "pulling the town out of the 
mud." 

A few years more and this seemingly 
hopeless job was given a new stimulus 
by a man named Nelson, who dropped in 
from Ft. Wayne, Ind., to have a look at 
the place for business opportunities. His 
idea was to start a newspaper, and his 
choice lay between this town, Brooklyn 
and St. Louis. 

As a man who dearly loved to mix into 
a fight, particularly if the scrap was not 
a private one but anybody's, turbulent 
Kansas City (the real metropolis of 
bleeding Kansas, though most of the town 
is unfortunately located on the wrong 
side of the state line) was an easy win- 
ner of his affections. Here, in 1880, he 
established an evening newspaper called 

Page tiventy-five 



*'The Star," which immediately was nick- 
named the "Twilight Twinkler." The 
first of many fights into which he mixed 
was the struggle to pull Kansas City out 
of the mud. He and the men he enlisted 
with him made notable progress. For he 
had vision and courage, of which are 
compounded the Spirit of the place. 

It is now about time in our epic for 
the community to receive another stag- 
gering wallop, for the "City of Kansas" 
is putting on airs again, has absorbed 
her old rival, Westport, in 1889, and has 
vaingloriously taken out a new city char- 
ter changing the official name of the 
place to "Kansas City." The population, 
meanwhile, has jumped from 55,785 in 
1880 to 132,716 in 1890. 

So, true to dramatic form, here comes 
the wallop when a frenzied real estate 
boom falls through. Again the referee 
begins to count over the prostrate form, 
—one — two — three — four — five years. But 
along about this time, dizzy but game as 
ever, Kansas City wobbles to her feet 
again, fighting, and shouts a strange new 
battle slogan. Nothing about railways, 
nothing about packing houses, nothing 
about any kind of business whatsoever in 
it. This is how it ran: "Make Kansas 
City a good place to live in!" 

This in the blackest hour of the after- 
the-boom reconstruction era, at a time 

Page twenty -six 



when Kansas City had not a single park 
or boulevard, and half of the town was 
placarded with signs of "For Sale" or 
''For Rent." That famous Spirit again! 
Kansas City managed somehow to rally 
to this new slogan. It sounded a little 
like mockery at first, but it really had 
vision and courage in it if you took the 
idea the right way. 




A hillsid? shantytown once cluim' lo the sides of this 
cliff — now made into a much admired part of 
Kansas City's famous park and boulevard sys- 
tem. (Kers:y Coates Terrace). — Gushing. 



Another odd thing happened along 
about this time which probably has long 
since been forgotten. The ancient Prophet 
Gilpin, who had lived to see his visionary 
map, drawn way back in 1855, become the 
land in '92 urging boldness to the faint 
of heart and proclaiming: "The West 
will rule the American continent!" The 

Page tiventy-seven 



loud grumbles that we hear these days in 
certain sections of the East against "im- 
posing Middle Western mortality upon 
the entire nation," may be taken, if you 
like, as tributes to this prophet's fore- 
sight. And here a quotation from Gover- 
nor Edwards of New Jersey might be par- 
ticularly apropos! 

But lest we stray from our epic, it 
should next be recorded that Kansas City, 
while yet convalescent from the shock of 
the collapse of the real estate boom, 
plunged whole-heartedly into the work of 
self-beautif ication ; and, from zero to 
start with in 1889, could boast of nearly 
twelve miles of bouvelards and 1,691 acres 
of parks before 1900. 

The transformations accomplished were 
sometimes really startling in their swift- 
ness. Raiders in the employ of the Park 
Board would descend upon a Shantytown 
or a Goatville-in-the-Hollow and almost 
overnight turn the place into a beauty 
spot. Thus the suggestion of mockery be- 
gan to vanish from the slogan, "Make 
Kansas City a good place to live in." 
Perhaps this is as good a place as any to 
observe again that the old axiom appears 
to hold true of groups of men (whole com- 
munities and cities) as it does of indi- 
viduals: '^Anyone can succeed if he only 
will pay the price." Kansas City paid the 
price for her parks and boulevards; paid 
till she groaned. She got behind a "city 

Page tiveiity-eight 



plan," though there was no such high- 
sounding name for the idea in those days, 
and "boosted it over the top" to victory. 

In a further valiant effort to get her- 
self talked about as a successful city, 
Kansas City built by popular subscrip- 
tion in 1899 (for she was always willing 
to "pay the price!") a big Convention 
Hall, and invited the Democrats to hold in 
it their impending national pow-wow. On 
Washington's Birthday of that year, Sousa 
waved his baton and boom-ta-ta-da ! the 
music of a big brass band shook the lofty 
rafters in dedication. Nearly every man, 
woman and child in town, from a popula- 
tion numbering now 164,745, had given a 
dollar or more to help build this darling 
of the city's heart. So it was a grand 
and glorious occasion. 

But another blow impended, A youth 
of twenty years ago vividly recalls the 
afternoon of April 4, 1900, when warned 
by a mammoth pillar of smoke from the 
west side of town and a thrilling din of 
fire bells, he ran with hundreds of other 
breathless citizens, young and old, to 
Thirteenth and Central Streets, and there 
stood gasping, stunned. Convention Hall, 
from basement to rooftree, was a mass of 
flames. 

For a count of several seconds Kansas 
City was again knocked out — then up from 
the mat she bounced, once more grimly 

Page twenty-nine 




Page thirty 



fighting. While the fire was raging hot- 
test and iron beams were wilting in the 
furnace like wires of a crushed bird cage, 
solicitors began to raise another popular 
subscription, which before sundown had 
mounted to $20,000. A new hall must be 
ready for the convention in ninety days! 

The "wise ones" said it couldn't be done. 
Money enough would be available, for the 
insurance companies, like good sports, paid 
up promptly and without a whimper. But 
to gather again the thousand and one ma- 
terials necessary, to assemble them and 
construct such a huge building in only 
ninety days was deemed quite out of the 
question. First of all, the steel could not 
be delivered in time. After that, a thou- 
sand other shipments might be delayed in 
transit — lack of any one of which on the 
precise moment when it was needed would 
tie up the whole works * * * 

It couldn't be done! 

But it WAS done. 

In fourteen days the site was cleared 
Then the first shipment of building ma- 
terials began to arrive. Scouts from Kan- 
sas City had scattered far and wide to 
trace these shipments. Men from Kansas 
City had settled themselves like deter- 
mined bill collectors on the front door- 
steps of steel mills and brick kilns and 
lumber yards, camping there and eternal- 
ly pestering until the goods they sought 

Page thirty -one 



were delivered to them in person and load- 
ed on freight cars. From the source of 
every shipment to Kansas City's own back 
yard, these men ate and slept in the cars; 
then they rode the wagons that delivered 
the goods at the site of Convention Hall. 
And here relays of steel workers, masons 
and carpenters and painters worked day 
and night, rebuilding a structure "bigger 
and better." 

It couldn't be done — but it was. On 
July 4, 1900, the last nail was driven 
home, and to the minute of their schedule 
the Democrats met in Kansas City and 
hopefully but rashly sent William Jen- 
nings Bryan to bat for his second strike- 
out. 

Those who have dwelt in Kansas City 
in the twenty years since know what a 
good place Kansas City has become to live 
in; know that there has been no let-up 
in the growth of parks and boulevards 
and beautiful residence districts; know 
that the city's trade has kept on extend- 
ing as swiftly as ever; and that the popu- 
lation has swollen from 248,381 in 1910 to 
324,410 in 1920. 

Doubtless, Kansas City, like every other 
town, has her blind spot, which is more 
apparent to a traveler than to the perma- 
nent resident. To my mind, that spot in 
Kansas City is the downtown section. 
First of all, it ought to be swept clean 
with an old-fashioned police dragnet. Af- 

Page thirty-two 




THE PAST AND THE PRESENT, on this block is 
one of the oldest and one of the newest buildings 
in Kansas City. At Tenth Street and Grand Ave. 
arises the frame of the new Federal Bank Build- 
ing. The oldest church building still in church use 
in Kansas City is the Catholic church of St. Peter 
and St. Paul, southwest corner of Ninth and 
McGee Streets. -Sarvent. 



Page thirty-three 




Page thirty-four 



ter having covered some 12,000 miles in 
the United States this year, your corre- 
spondent can testify that the "wide open 
town" is now generally passe in America 
and creates an unflattering impression up- 
on the casual visitor. 

Next, before anyone starts to celebrate 
the city's hundredth birthday, not a min- 
ute more should be lost in rushing work 
upon some new hotels, several of them — 
for Kansas City is losing thousands upon 
thousands of dollars these days (which 
are days of heavy travel) by not being in 
a position, as regards hotel accommoda- 
tions to invite a heavier tourist trade. 
The throngs from the North and the East 
who pour through the Union Station to 
California in the winter, and who pass 
through from the South to the North in 
summertime, should be — and easily could 
be — induced by advertising to stop over in 
Kansas City for a few days instead of, as 
at present, for only a few hours. The 
heads of the Chamber of Commerce know 
this. (At least, one representative with 
whom I talked on that recent visit was 
frank to confess it.) 

Finally, a plaza somewhere within 
striking distance of the retail shopping 
district ought to be cleared to give down- 
town a breathing space. You who have 
made Kansas City a good place to live 
in should now turn to and make it good 
to work in. Take it from one who under- 

Page thirty-five 




Page thirty-six 



stands Kansas City well enough to speak 
frankly — the downtown section does not 
appear to have improved much in attrac- 
tiveness in the past ten years. It has not 
so much as built new office buildings com- 
mensurate with the population growth and 
the pressing demands for more elbow 
room for hard-driven workers. The resi- 
dence districts have extended and been 
beautified in that space of time almost be- 
yond belief (the Country Club District, 
in particular, deserves to be a show place 
of national fame) — but "downtown" looks 
pretty much the same. 

I wonder why? Is it because that slo- 
gan about making Kansas City a good 
place to live in diverts the community's 
best thought and effort to outlying parks 
and boulevards and homes, while the heart 
of the city goes on beating to the same old 
tune? 

An old friend's parting word to his old 
home town is: "Start something down- 
town. Make Kansas City a good 'place to 
ivork in!" 

Who said, "It can't be done?" 

I seem to have heard those words be- 
fore, and a Spirit answered them. 

But no more of this. The important 
thing is to repeat that Kansas City is en- 
titled to a glorious birthday party in 1921. 



Page thirty-seven 




Page thirty-eight 




THE SCOUT, Cyrus Eallin's statue, bought by pub- 
lic subscription. It stands dominant on a hill in 
Penn Valley Park, southwest of the Memorial 
site. — Sarvent. 



Page thirty -7iine 




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